these are the images croque world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to operations or rule the day. it's in with the new around the globe with spectacular celebrations from australia to america we bring you the highlights. party also looks at the legacy of the twenty well that could have been if things had turned out differently and explore some of the challenges the world might face in the coming months. and an eleventh hour deal looks set to pull america from the edge of the fiscal cliff and the tax hikes for millions of americans for the time being at least.

if you just joined us for good morning to you from moscow just a tad after midnight here now my name is kevin when i first twenty thirteen has made around the globe the last twenty four hours with an array of fireworks performances and cheering crowds as take a look at how the world celebrates and should we use a lead was among the first to usher in twenty thirty proud. to introduce one of the fireworks exploding of the city's right. then straight here join the festivities very shortly afterwards with almost two million people gathered to see that now stand your dropping fireworks display from the harbor bridge as the clock struck it. do you continue to trump the march through asia with one more spectacular shows and hong kong when the biggest ever in fact work out that twenty thirty culminated in a light extravaganza on the land in the sky. and europe picked up the torch then here is burlington hosting one of the world's largest open air parties in the

brandenburg gate. while the u.k. pulled out all the stops at the end of a huge year for the u.k. america's mariah's in fireworks display in the heart of the capital at the london eye all set to music super psyched across the atlantic to over a man. spectators descended on new york's iconic times square to celebrate the event with the traditional drop of the crystal ball. and here in russia the new year officially kicked off for the traditional chime of the country's main claw. revelers from across russia came to red square to watch the crowning moment of fireworks above the iconic some basil's. well there are mixed emotions regarding the year this past with some sad to see then but many more hopeful that twenty thirty will see better times artie's there's a caffein of takes a look at the world that could have been. twenty

twelve was certainly full of disappointing headlines hope fueled by the arab spring turned into the turmoil of the arab autumn the war in syria claimed countless lives and a fiscal crisis all the european union torn apart at its very seams and the problems facing our world today certainly don't offer themselves up to an easy fix what if things had turned out differently what if opportunities were actually a pawn instead of missed well here's our look at the twenty twelve headlines that could have been. diplomacy succeeds in syria and ending bloody conflict. instead this was the image of syria the world saw increasingly violent clashes between government forces and the opposition had claimed more than forty thousand lives efforts to negotiate a diplomatic solution fell flat because divisions ripped apart both the country and the international community hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to

neighboring states where many have found conditions to be dismal meanwhile syria's war is threatening to spill over its borders as tensions escalate within and in the region. of told me to try and sanction slash does iran's nuclear to accept. gunning to end gun fire the us rules to restrict fire on. mideast peace israel league two state park has promised on. yet this was the reality israel's assault on palestinian militants in gaza israel's anti-missile shield repelled the most attacks on its territory but a strike claimed the lives of more than one hundred sixty palestinians many of them civilians despite harsh condemnation from many in the international community the war and israel's subsequent decision to construct three thousand new settlements effectively slammed the door shut to any prospects of peace goethe people power moment he's. step aside and let a democracy. get lost get my notorious kuantan of my prison permanently shot.

euro zone cuts the cuts and lifts austerity. but the news of austerity only tightened as deep public sector cuts brought thousands of angry demonstrators to the streets of greece spain italy and portugal. the worst economic crisis of a generation has battered the european union's very foundations exacerbating tensions between member states with some regions now desperately wanting out i grew up in a europe that was divided from east to west going to europe that is divided from the south never at any point in the history of this union has there been more discord of rank that we covered. corporate cash banned from the campaign coffers as part of the us political please. know we here for u.k. brits quit the european union. we found a duty in the song to point to the un free speech and. instead a song jermaine's

a political refugee at ecuador's london embassy where he's been granted asylum he continues to fight extradition to sweden over alleged sex crimes charges that he says are politically motivated and tied to his work in leaking international government secrets. the power of people speaking up and resisting together terrifies corrupt democratic power so much so that old people here in the west and the enemy of governments an enemy to be watched and intimate to be controlled and to be impoverished true democracy is not the white house true democracy is not. true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth against flies from the right here in london. everyday ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech and just sent. from heretics to

hero american whistleblower bradley manning finally free. droning on the nation's agree to end iraq of remote control. egypt's arab spring sees democracy defeat hardline islamist. the reality on the ground was anything but egyptian president mohamed morsi is fouled like power grab unleashed fury and frenzied street battles and a fast track to constitutional overhaul referendum left a bitter opposition eager for change but then two thousand and twelve saw the arab spring transformed into an egyptian nightmare had a revolution to get rid of a tyrant taters. in the order to that we made elections and the revolution and elections to choose someone to the present us turned out that this guy is also a tyrant himself and these headlines may have been the stuff of imagination but

that sea of twenty thirteen can bring any of them to life. r.t. moscow but the celebrations on capitol hill were delayed as lawmakers used the early hours of twenty thirteen to strike a crucial deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff the senate eventually agreed to hold the proposed tax hike which would have eventually affected virtually every american worker the deal still is that to go before the house of representatives later tuesday of his economics expert max kaiser told us that it's still too early to pop the champagne over it. some people call him the crazy kaiser mr marks joining us good to see you max. two thousand two thousand and thirteen a happy new year to you there it's a really kevin and a nice to hear you know you never say what made you always go for the juggler with all the guests you have on the kaiser report is there anyone at this point you already are eyeing up for two thousand and thirteen and he picked him in the future absolutely we're going after jamie diamond got the cops ready for. we're going to

find him we're going to jail i'm a lot of the prankster. this is the year we see pranksters in jail i sort of started putting pranksters in jail now the rest of the world's going to stop putting pranksters in jail the fiscal cliff is just more theater from bankers and politicians trying to distract people from the underlying root catastrophe that is a bunch of bankers who are manipulating the system day in and day out destroying the economy this fiscal cliff is just more drama more theater and it doesn't really focus on the true underlying problems and we're going to see more of this going forward in two thousand and thirteen anything good bye flecked attention from the mobs with their pitchforks and their torches were coming after these people they want to just delay that day of reckoning for many months if they can but that day's reckoning in twenty thirteen it's comic and well there was one coldly new year with the europeans that their leaders might ease up on that. all governments

listening well the truth is the government's accompt afford to lose some of our economic contributors says countries are still heading down the wrong policy he tells his wife. but a tough twelve months for the world's top whistleblower julian assange spent hoffa twenty twelve under house arrest in the remainder of the ecuadorian embassy in london our correspondent has been following his ups and downs throughout the last twelve months. a lot of you say weekly did more in a year would see the most media organizations have done decades we've really had a front seat view of everything that's been going on we hired him at the beginning of the year fighting that extradition to sweden we saw his the pill rejected we then saw that dramatic twist in the trial when he went into the i could do it embassy seeking asylum we've been learning julian assange certainly the british media we see a lot of the cold on him quite viciously especially during the course of this year

with movies. events happening surrounding chilean assaults a lot of people who would put that down plain and simply to jealousy last year was a success for barack obama security second u.s. presidency our washington correspondent says he not only succeeded in snatching victory from march rival mitt romney but also votes from the third party candidates to. there were cheers of relief here when he won i would say because the alternative was thought to be so much worse many voted out of fear that romney could win for them he was another george w. bush so whether americans have fallen out of love with obama that two thousand and eight euphoria was gone that's for sure back then there were these crowds you know in the streets all across the country shedding tears of joy so bad in their view where eight years of bush presidency obama was we get to see the year and then he went and saved the banks saved the auto industry something he took a special pride in during the election campaign but across the country people

remained out of work and are still out of work so this time president obama ran under the banner it could have been so much worse as you imagine it was not a banner for the national euphoria it was more like you have no choice but to choose me kind of something that shocked me. i was covering the election here it was it was the second debate between obama and romney i'm sure you remember you remember that i just presidential nominee from the green party joel stein was arrested right outside the venue where the debate was taking place she was protesting for exclusion from the state and nobody like no news channel period mentioned her arrest none and i was switching channels for hours to see if anything was said about that and it was nothing i can imagine what the reaction would be here in the states if a presidential candidate is the other big country was arrested in the media there wouldn't even mention it but apparently it happens in the u.s. no big deal president kennedy's get arrested all the time right well there was some

irony and yes anyway during the election campaign the mainstream media had been focused on nothing else and no one else but these two candidates and we are t.v. as you remember of course saw the is saw an opportunity there to show what others don't and we posted the debate indeed we did so was. correspondent then i head we've more on what. holds for gun owners in the united states with president obama likely to keep the pressure up to ban deadly. school shooting in connecticut. and why a few people took. rallies in twenty twelve plus examine the city activities actually . download the official publication. stream quality and

enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just. now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks about seventy odd p. interviews intriguing story. arabic. visit arabic. it's called.

the end of the year so barack obama's victory over shadowed by the primary school shooting in connecticut led the president to pledge an end to the epidemic of gun violence. takes a look at whether the land of the free is ready though to loosen its grip on the right to carry a firearm. my guess is what we're going to see is cosmetic change we're going to see probably the or the assault weapons ban come back to be a fair number of loopholes in it but you know the u.s. is not going to end up going the way that's what's a longer israel have done or many most european countries have done australia when john howard was president one thousand nine hundred eight when there was a mass slaughter and then they said ok that's it we're going to buy back all the guns and it's not going to happen here there's just too much money being made with guns insane supreme court or at least five right wing crazies out of nine on the supreme court decided that even though the second amendment says in order to

maintain a well regulated militia necessary for the security of a free state the right to you know you people have the right to own guns that's half of it the other half of it is that the supreme court also said that corporations interest groups lobbying groups billionaires can throw unlimited amounts of money in politicians russian politics criminal return for vladimir putin and fresh anti-government protests in twenty twelve of them in smaller numbers in the be full of these political analysts watch developments in the heart of those rallies he told me at mccauley goodness and now is how he sees the protests mood in russia panning out. i would say it's kind of bleak but not hopeless ok we didn't come up with any new ideas new organization new faces and if pussy riot is that we are of the opposition that's pretty dreadful situation for the russian people and political development in general here and there's there was political change in this country in a positive change who does make up the opposition as we have. it's

a very interesting question because i have gone to most of the major demonstrations and there were people there of goodwill in my opinion but then there were fascists there ok who were communists there i mean these are people they're ok and it's your right to demonstrate i for that like we have here but they didn't accomplish anything that i could see they have no organization no unifying ideas except for i don't like but i'm open to them which is not a very it's not a political agenda there were a few protests which i was out as well where it did seem like that was the method if you wanted to gain traction on this opposition movement do you see people coming out and take the train lost a lot of its novelty effect right ok because political change takes leaders in years and years that have to be local this is what happens in political changes with countries that were what they were carrying at one time it takes a long time to get people involved in the process and that is happening very very strongly there are some people who want to really fast and they don't want to do it

through elections they want power because they want power because they believe they deserve it and what about the fact that we're not going to see any presidential elections of course that all led up to being elected a third term this protest and now they're kind of when i'm down now oh i would say to people i mean if you want to continue to protest for me in but you know join a political party there are forty four of them now you have a choice ok get involved see one of the things i saw with a lot of the protesters is that they want someone else to do all the hard work ok they want to go out and wave a flag and say you know give out a slogan we don't want to do the hard nitty gritty work of political change and that's what we need to do. the russian and global politics news cross-talk series throughout the past twelve months a nazi dot com our web sites plenty of editions of the show for you to watch. iran chooses a new president this june or mood over dinner served its maximum two terms and

there's little clue as to who is going to replace him to tackle the almost inexorable tension with the west over to rand's nuclear program jonas afshin rattansi is often shared his insights around with this doesn't expect a new leader to bend a foreign well. i think whoever we people of iran elects policy foreign policy terms things are going to be much the same people are already talking about the mayor of tehran at the moment i was in a job himself president ahmadinejad was the mayor of tehran for the new mayor of tehran ghalibaf and people are talking about him. perhaps winning in june because it's too early in his notoriously difficult to predict iranian elections as to whether they will be as hardline and again the terms of the terminology of western corporate media on this or a bizarre image the islamic extremist and all sorts of different morning because the point is iran is there to stay in terms of forging a very different type of developing nation and economy because it has all that oil

and has all those resources and it's not going to suddenly start changing things the way the i.m.f. or the way that washington wants it to be. iran's nuclear plans. to dominate headlines coming out of the middle east this year then online we got expert opinion on who the key players in countries are likely to be in shaping how the rest of regions fortunes are going to pan out from iran to israel to the palestinians it's all about home also one of the. photo finish for twenty we've lined up a gallery of eye catching snapshots of the big stories that captured worldwide attention in the past year if you do a joy. europeans

have a year of fairly uncompromising coats to contend with which already saw plenty of street protests in the past year servicing their own debt and unemployment is one thing but investment advisor patrick young says none of it's enough to repair the country which remains the biggest headache what's happened so far has been swindling cuts on the masses and we really haven't managed to make the wrong move to state impact upon the whole nation itself greece is still fundamentally in a huge problematic situation doors not remotely have a functioning government system that fiscally is going to manage to organize itself in any which way possible to manage to get through the continuing swinge and cuts that need to take place and of course then we're looking at the whole issue of the demonstrators are the governments listening well the truth is the governments can't

afford to listen because what we're seeing within the european union even if the euro has survived miraculously for twelve months government has run out of money the european union's western socialist model of spending huge amounts of money borrowing even greater amounts of money and hoping to pay everything manyara or indeed thirty years from mine yana simply does not work just over two years ago ireland was bankrupt to being bailed out to rescue its failed economy and on top of that it's now the country's turn to take on the next six month presidency of the european council well as the reports the celtic tiger has got some hard graft ahead of it. it's all change for the e.u. presidency as takes six months rotating challenge on the first of january not the ovi a choice islands one of the pegs the countries that have the nice stable economies in europe and sure enough islands the country to take hold in the presidency of the

twenty seven nation while being propped up by i.m.f. money so for the next six months the e.u. and its systemic problems will be presided over by one of its weakest and most problematic members so what specific challenges does face in europe over the six months of its presidency first the european economy is slowing and the crisis is nowhere near. secondly it must preside over leaders actually agreeing to an e.u. budget for the two thousand and fourteen to two thousand and twenty something they've spectacularly failed to do so in fall and thirdly there's a problem coming from right here in london increasing british opposition to brussels and the threat to european cohesion that poses the irish government expects the e.u. presidency to coast in excess of seventy million euros money the country can ill

afford and what will it be spent on twenty four million on catering accommodation and transport for example and another twenty million extra governments doth. laura smith one of our team in the whole world is coming up in our after this break . he survived war atrocities. to make

a final decision. has changed his life and the world around him. by giving. hope. and love to so many children. the arab world. science technology innovation all the developments from around russia. the future covered. hello again as the syrian conflict and his its twenty second month international envoy lakhdar brahimi says the crisis must be solved in twenty thirteen and what's

his peace plan to help achieve that but as the new year rang in heavy clashes and shelling reported near the capital middle east expert pepe escobar believes the will the stop the bloodshed should also come from outside syria to. very sad to say to everybody all over the world that the top geopolitical tragedy of two thousand and thirteen is going to be the top geopolitical tragedy of two thousand and eleven the rape of syria the only possibility would be that the opposition. in a syrian way this sides not to listen to the saudis the turks the qataris the americans the brits and the french and they sit down with the assad government and they work out a transitional government or at least the for an additional period leading to free and fair elections is this going to happen not likely the recent conflict in gaza isn't putting israel off planning even more settlements in the occupied palestinian

territories that despite saber rattling from hummus and. defend themselves by all means a middle east correspondent paul asli outlines how this might affect the region's future them to look at what's happening on the ground israel continues to announce settlement construction and the palestinians continue to say that for as long as these announcements continue they will be no results in of peace talks it wasn't so long ago that the palestinians were moving through that status the united nations that you cannot attack and the fact that we still have palestinian faction groups hamas and fatah who always seem to me at each other's throats in less than a month the israelis will go to the polls and by all predictions they will really lead the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu for another term of office and it doesn't seem as if he has an olive branch so certainly the prognosis for any kind of peace moves is far let's hope that as tough as it will be the two sides will find a way to work together happy new year. thanks paula same to you to know the main

news from around the globe violence has flared up again in the palestinian territory in the northern west bank dozens of palestinians reportedly injured when israeli security forces fired on them are the troops were pelted with stones and bottles the trouble erupted after the soldiers disguised as vegetable sellers apparently tried to seize known operative of a local jihadist group chokepoints and blockades have been set up in the area you can follow our middle east correspondent updates on twitter just look for all the slayer out. of adeline's this morning in northwest pakistan five female teachers and two health workers have been shot dead in an ambush is pleased the attackers to warn other women against seeking education in conservative parts of the country which are often raided by islamic militants in october taliban government shot a fifteen year old girl for promoting schooling among other. scuffles between protesters and police have broken out of the march in hong kong demanding the resignation of the city's top political. face fall in popularity you know a no confidence vote against him since he came to power six months ago he was

elected by beijing back to beat you twelve hundred. twenty twelve so suddenly the rise of the machines is drone warfare shot into the headlines american unmanned craft killing civilians abroad the approval of drone use for keeping tabs on people inside the u.s. those are the topics that drew fire then from martin the host of breaking the set and she thinks it's going to get worse in twenty thirty really we're talking about drones actually a really serious topic because people are under this notion that drones are somehow precise good way to fight the war on terror really they completely are counterintuitive big create in harbor more terrorists they have a ninety eight percent failure rate i mean so why are we using and i mean it's just amazing to me that this president is rain on drones and taking on more and more drones and not only that but i mean the surveillance drones are going to have been in the.